A Tale of Two Displays

I now have a second monitor on my desk at home, a 23″ Apple Cinema HD Display from 2005 that my brother left for dead. He kindly shipped me the monitor and I’ve spent the last couple of weeks trying to diagnose it’s problem. As it turns out, the power supply is not healthy. It works, but there’s a catch–you have to short out the ground signal on the cable that connects the power supply to the monitor. Once that’s done, everything is fine. It cost me $30 at Best Buy for the Mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter which allows me to connect a second monitor to our iMac.

I have to say, using two screens is certainly luxurious. I saves so much time when modifying and opening documents, keeping one open for content and a second open to edit. Tammy’s going to love it while she’s working on the catalog for the Enamelist Society.

Here’s the bad news: to be safe, we should buy another power supply to replace the aging 90W that Doug sent. Most people who posted on Apple’s forums said that the upgraded 150 supply works and solves the problem without hacking the power supply like I did. That means a $150 purchase–questionable considering you can replace this monitor with a new one from a variety of companies for about $200. For now, things will stay the way they are. If the power supply dies, I guess we’ll decide then.